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Dessert

Christmas Plum Pudding, Royal

A steamed or boiled plum pudding made with stale bread crumbs, flour, suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, almonds, sugar, eggs, milk, baking soda, brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Christmas Plum Pudding, Royal

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the bread crumbs, flour, and salt.

  2. Add the suet, raisins, currants, candied peel, almonds, and sugar. Mix well.

  3. Stir in the whisked eggs, milk, baking soda, and brandy until just moistened.

Cloth and boil

  1. Prepare a pudding cloth by boiling it in water, wringing it dry, and flouring it.

  2. Place the pudding mixture in the cloth, tie securely, leaving room for expansion.

  3. Boil the pudding in boiling water for 4 hours or steam for 5 hours.

  4. Ensure to add boiling water as needed during cooking.

  5. After cooking, hang the pudding in the cloth to cool.

Serve

  1. To serve, boil the pudding for 1 hour to heat through.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable structure when cooked.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense, moist pudding together.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body, giving a tender rather than gummy texture.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the pudding moist and rich as it cooks.
Baking soda
Releases gas that lightens the pudding and helps it rise.
Muscatel raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the pudding.

The step that matters

Leave room for expansion and keep the water boiling. The pudding swells as it cooks, so the cloth must be tied loosely enough to allow it. Topping up boiling water keeps the temperature steady, so the pudding cooks evenly rather than turning heavy or sodden.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, flour, raisin, almond, sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, flour, raisin, almond, sugar, egg, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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